As Vice President Kamala Harris took the stage in Wisconsin for her first rally as the Democratic Party’s likely presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump gathered members of the press for a conference call to slam his new rival on border and immigration policy.
On the call, Trump committed to debating Harris and said he would be willing to do so multiple times, though he reiterated his desire to change the venue of a September debate, which he agreed to when President Joe Biden was still running, from ABC News.
He also committed to keep his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, on the Republican ticket.
“Absolutely, I’d want to. I think it’s important” to debate Harris, Trump said. “I’m not thrilled about ABC because they're truly fake news. I watched last night. They're actually trying to make a hero out of Joe Biden, when he was the worst president in history, and they were doing things with Kamala, like, ‘what a wonderful thing it is that she is running.’”
“I have at least equal say and I don't like the idea of ABC. I would be willing to do more than one debate, actually,” he added.
Trump went on to say he believes “if you're the Democrat nominee or the Republican nominee, you really have an obligation to debate” and that it’s “important” to do so in a two-party system, but that he agreed to the debate on ABC when Biden was the candidate and now would prefer a change of host. He previously suggested Fox News, the friendlier right-wing network.
And he claimed it will be “easier” running against the 59-year-old Harris than the 81-year-old Biden, whose disastrous June debate performance against Trump led to his eventual decision to drop out.
“She's the same as Biden, but much more radical. She's a radical left person, and this country doesn't want a radical left person to destroy it. She's far more radical than he is. She wants open borders. She wants things that nobody wants,” Trump said. “What you should do is take a look at San Francisco now compared to before she became the district attorney, and you'll see what you'll do to our country. So I think she should be easier than Biden because he was slightly more mainstream, but not much.”
At an event hall in suburban Milwaukee on Tuesday afternoon, Harris framed the race as a choice between freedom and chaos.
“We believe in the sacred freedom to vote,” she said. “We believe that every person in our nation should have the freedom to live safe from the terror of gun violence,” she added, “and we trust women to make decisions about their own bodies.”
Trump, by contrast, she painted as someone found guilty of fraud, liable for sexual abuse and who conjures “chaos, fear and hate.”
In a campaign memo on Tuesday titled “The Harris Honeymoon,” Trump pollster Tony Fabrizio predicted public polls will start to show Harris “gaining on or even leading President Trump.” Fabrizio predicted that “will end and voters will refocus on her role as Biden’s partner and co-pilot” and “learn about Harris’ dangerously liberal record before becoming Biden’s partner.”
At least one major public poll conducted after Biden dropped out and released on Tuesday shows Harris leading Trump nationally. A Reuters/Ipsos poll found Harris up 42% to 38% over Trump, with independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. polling at 7%. Head to head, Harris topped Trump 44-42, per the survey.
On the call, Trump doubled down on his commitment to keeping Vance on the Republican ticket after some reporting that allies were expressing concerns the Ohio senator might not help Trump as much electorally against Harris than they had hoped when Biden was still their opponent. Trump made the choice on the first day of the Republican National Convention last week, six days before Biden dropped out.
“I’d do the same pick,” Trump said when asked if he would have chosen differently had he known he would end up running against Harris. “He's doing really well. He's really caught on.”
At a pair of rallies on Monday, Vance slammed Harris for being “too blind or too corrupt to admit to the American people that Joe Biden should have never been” president and said she was “even more extreme than Biden” on immigration. He also criticized Harris for talking about “the history of this country, not with appreciation, but with condemnation,” arguing the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants wasn’t grateful enough to the United States.
“Look, of course, every country, just like every family, certainly mine, has its pockmarks, right? Not everything's perfect. It's never going to be,” Vance said in Ohio. “But you, if you want to lead this country, you should feel grateful for it. You should feel a sense of gratitude. And I never hear that gratitude come through when I listen to Kamala Harris.”
“What the hell have you done other than to collect a government check for the past 20 years?” he asked in Virginia later in the day.
Earlier on Tuesday’s call, Trump framed Harris as Biden’s “border czar,” a title she has never used nor been described as by the Biden administration. Republicans, including Trump, have focused heavily on the flow of migrants across the U.S.-Mexico border and the state of immigration in the country to attack Harris since Biden endorsed her on Sunday. He also claimed she “destroyed San Francisco, which is a hell of a thing to do,” when she served as the city’s district attorney from 2004 to 2011.
Trump also said he would make “at least another trip, or two trips, or three trips, whatever is necessary,” to the border during the campaign.
The former president was extremely critical of Harris on the call, but held back on using the personal insults he has been lobbing at her on social media in recent days. In posts since Biden dropped out, Trump has called her “Dumb as a Rock” and “Lyin’ Kamala Harris.” At a rally on Saturday, before she was on the path to be the Democratic nominee for president, he called her “stupid,” crazy” and “nuts.”
“That’s all he got?” responded Doug Emhoff, Harris’ husband, at an event in Virginia on Tuesday.
Spectrum News’ Justin Tasolides and the Associated Press contributed to this report.